


Sins of the Mother

by race-jackson (Race_Jackson23)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: A Little Anti-Rhaegar, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Female Jon Snow, Gen, Jon Snow is a Targaryen, Lyanna POV, R plus L equals J, Rhaegar/Lyanna was not a pretty ship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2019-01-21 06:27:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12451503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Race_Jackson23/pseuds/race-jackson
Summary: As she lies dying in the Tower of Joy, Lyanna Stark contemplates the consequences of her actions. Her countrymen - dead. Her husband - dead. Her family - dead. Herself - dead, or close to. She's burnt it all down, and all she has to show for it is her daughter, who was more than likely condemned to death too.But if the gods spared her Visenya, she'd do it all again in a heartbeat.





	Sins of the Mother

**Author's Note:**

> My headcanon about what Lyanna's last moments were like in a world where Jon was not Jon, but Visenya. She's understandably antagonistic towards Rhaegar,

Lyanna knew she was dying.

Though they had already been changed twice since she birthed her babe a day ago, the linen sheets she lay upon had become soiled with blood – _her blood_ – and sweat. Pain radiated throughout her lower half, her breath now coming in ragged, fitful gasps. Her limbs shook with false cold as the fever ran through them.

She was hardly stupid. Although young, she knew that the aftermath of childbirth was not supposed to be like this. Sure, she had heard that fever and blood were common enough, but she was sure that _this much_ blood, fever _this strong_ , was far from common. Not to mention that the looks of concern the three dark-haired Dornish maids kept sending her and their barely-concealed whispers were enough to chill whatever blood remained in her fevered veins.

And so, Lyanna knew she was dying. It frightened her, though she cared not to admit it. She didn’t want to die here, in Dorne, so far away from her home and her family.

It was the thought of Winterfell, of her family, of her stoic father and her loving brothers – wolf-blooded Brandon, gentle Ned and playful Benjen – that both comforted her and filled her with melancholy. She missed them _so_ _much_. She wanted to tell them how sorry she was for everything: for running away with Rhaegar, for cursing her family in the eyes of the Gods by marrying him on the Isle of Faces, for believing his honeyed words of love and devotion when all he’d wanted was to get a daughter on her.

Not that it mattered, now. He was gone, as was Father and Brandon, and she too would join them in death before long. Soon, only Ned and Benjen would be left of the Starks, never to know how sorry she was for what she had caused.

Well, not only Ned and Benjen. There was her babe, a hale little girl with a tuft of dark hair and slate-grey eyes. That little girl, the daughter her husband had started a war to get, looked nothing like Rhaegar Targaryen, much to her petty glee. Her babe was all her, all _Stark_ , a child of the North for all that she was born in the South.

Not that her daughter’s looks mattered much either. Robert would have her butchered regardless, just as her child’s siblings had been butchered, and she would be too weak to stop him. She could already hear the clashing of swords wafting up to her chambers in the damned Tower as the last of the Kingsguard fought the men sent to find her. Perhaps she should end it now, before they could make it up the stairs and take her child from her to give to Robert; she should give her daughter a merciful death, a quick death. She owed her babe that much.

A sudden, fiery-hot pain shot through her belly. Unwillingly, a scream was wrenched from her lips, prompting the maids to her side. It _hurt_ , it hurt so much!

“Milady,” sweet Breha murmured in her accented tongue. “What do you need, milady?”

Lyanna’s gaze flittered down to her belly, to the bloody sheets that covered it, and she took a deep breath, watching as it fell and rose with the air in her lungs. A wave of exhaustion fell over her. It was not long off.

“My baby,” she whispered. “I want my baby. Bring her to me.”

Breha exchanged looks with the other two, before nodding and leaving the room. The door closed behind her with a soft thud. Deria, another of the maids, made herself busying by picking up the scraps of linen they had used to mop up the blood while Saira, Breha’s twin, stood solemnly at the end of her bed.

It was then that Lyanna noted the lack of noise. Gone was the clang of steel on steel. It meant one of two possibilities: either the Kingsguard had won, or Robert’s men had. Though it left a sour taste in her mouth to do so, she prayed that her jailors had won, for it was the only hope for her baby’s survival.

 _Please, let it be the Kingsguard. Let it be those who would see my baby_ safe _. I’ll do anything._

Striding footsteps echoed faintly down the hallway outside her chamber. The quiet purpose within those steps reminded her of her Ned, full of a silent strength that neither she nor Bran, with their ubiquitous wolf-blood, had ever been able to muster. For a short moment, she let herself imagine that it was Ned, that he had come to rescue her and her baby from this place.

She imagined him taking them home to Winterfell, where she could watch her little girl grow up and become the fiercest, the kindest, the smartest woman in all of Westeros. Ned would be the best kind of uncle, always showering his little niece with affection in his quiet and understated way, while adventurous and daring Benjen would race around the keep with her girl about his shoulders, eliciting peals of laughter from the babe and heart palpitations from the mother. She imagined Father and Brandon, too; imagined how her father would settle her babe on his knee as he went over his letters, and how Bran would glare at stableboys and lordlings alike as they fawned over her daughter’s blossoming beauty.

It brought a soft smile to Lyanna’s lips. It was a good dream. A dream that was impossible, yes, but all the sweeter for that impossibility. More than anything else, she wanted her dream to come true, to go home and live out the rest of her days with her family.

But that would never happen, _and it was all her fault_.

The door swung open. For a moment, Lyanna swore she was still dreaming her vision of home, because the man that stood frozen in the doorway looked _so much_ like Ned that his name was pulled involuntarily from her.

“Ned?”

“Lyanna,” he uttered, and her heart felt as if it would burst with happiness. _It’s him, it’s_ him _!_ A large, callused hand found its way to her head and rested in the sweaty hair by her temple.

“Is that you?” she wondered. His dark gaze darted to her bloodied middle, worry creasing his brow. He cradled her shaking hand as she lifted it from the mess of her sheets. “Is that really you? You’re not a dream?”

“No, I’m not a dream,” he murmured. The corners of his mouth upturned in a pained smile that looked more of a grimace. “I’m here. Right here.”

Despite the agony, Lyanna grinned. “I’ve missed you, big brother,” she told him.

Tears filled his eyes. His bottom lip quivered slightly and his breath hitched as he returned, “I’ve missed you, too.” That struck Lyanna as odd – Ned never cried, not once. Even when their mother had died, Ned had been stoic, grim-faced and tearless where she and Benjen (and even Brandon to an extent, though he never would have admitted it) were weepy and hysterical. The sight of his tears now, when she herself knew she was close to death, filled her with an almost paralysing dread.

“I want to be brave,” she whimpered.

He hushed her, stroking her hair comfortingly. Worry was set in his face as he regarded the bloodied sheets.

“You are,” he said.

Lyanna shook her head. “I’m not,” she denied. The ache in her womb grew worse. Her tears flowed freely then, tightening her throat and making it harder to see and speak. “I don’t want to _die_.”

“You’re not going to die,” he insisted. “Get her some water!” She protested weakly, but he ignored her. “Is there a Maester?”

Lyanna shook her head, interrupting him and trying to get his attention. “Listen to me Ned,” she demanded, beckoning him closer with a shaking hand on his shoulder. Ned leant down, his ear to her mouth, and she took her chance. He needed to know; he was her only hope.

“Her name– i-i-is Visenya,” she croaked. “I was _so_ stupid, I thought he lo-loved me, but he only wanted a daughter for his pro– But Robert – if Robert finds out, _he’ll kill her_! You _know_ he will! You have to protect her. Promise me Ned!”

Ned’s face froze. Slack-jawed, he stared ahead, a heart-wrenching devastation brewing in his stormy eyes. Tears gathered there, threatening to spill down his flushed cheeks.

In that moment, Lyanna felt like the worst person in the world. Here was her older brother – her _only_ older brother – faced with the realisation that all he had lost, all he had fought for, was for _nothing_. He had lost his father and brother; he was forced into a role and a marriage that, for all that she knew he would be well-suited to, was never meant for him. And on top of that, the stupid woman who had caused so much pain and suffering through her own selfish desires was begging of him something that she knew his honour and love for his family could never refuse.

Ned was paying the price for her rash, self-centred mistakes, and she hated it. It was so completely unfair of her to have cause him so much pain and still demand this of him. And yet, though it pained her, she begged him regardless.

Visenya’s life was at stake.

“Promise me,” she whispered.

A baby’s cry filled the room then. Breha had returned to her chamber, little Visenya in tow – all wrapped up in her blankets and whining her displeasure at being woken up. Lyanna gently turned Ned’s face to where Breha was approaching with her baby before sinking back into the bed, completely drained. She watched as the maid carefully handed the baby over to Ned.

“Promise me, Ned.”

Wonder warred with grief across the planes of his face as he took in the baby now settled in his arms.

“Promise me.”

The tears fell freely then, streaking trails down Ned’s dirty cheeks. He studied the little girl’s cherubic face for a few moments that stopped Lyanna’s heart – _what if he doesn’t agree what if he says no he_ can’t _he’s my only hope –_ before his stormy gaze met hers. A second later, with his brow furrowed and mouth set in a hard line, he gave her an almost imperceptible nod.

“I promise,” he whispered.

His vow met her fear as a soothing balm, drawing out the fight and leaving her only with a profound sense of relief. _Ned will protect her, Visenya will be safe_ , she thought to herself. _Safe from Robert and those that would see her dead._ She let out a breath she hadn’t noticed she was holding and sank even further into the bed.

“Thank you,” she murmured. “Thank you, Ned – for everything.”

The smile Ned gave her was strained but genuine. It filled her chest with warmth.

“Give her to me?” she smiled. Ned looked hesitant for a moment, but gave in, placing Visenya into Lyanna’s trembling arms. When it became evident that her grip was too weak to support the baby, Ned shifted her onto his chest, so that he cradled mother and babe both in his arms, and rested against the bloodied mattress. Lyanna barely noticed, too entranced in her little girl to care.

Visenya … it had grated at Lyanna to call her daughter that. She hadn’t wanted to, even when she’d been starry-eyed and Rhaegar had whispered of the prophecy and about his Visenya, for what mother wanted her babe to be named after a witch, and an incestuous one at that? And after she’d realised that she’d been tricked and manipulated, she had been even less inclined to indulge Rhaegar’s fantasies and had pondered at length about naming her child Alysanne, or Lorra or Lyarra. She knew it could never be, for Visenya was but a great symbol of Lyanna’s rejection of the North and would only be seen as a mockery of her home, but it did not stop her from dreaming of it.

And yet, there was so little of him in her daughter’s face, in her colouring, that it felt as if she were depriving her daughter even more of her father to refuse the name. And it _was_ all he had wanted. Who was she to deny him this one victory – and it _was_ the only thing he’d been right about – from beyond his grave of failures? Was it not more ironic that the one thing he thought needed for his prophecy was indeed what made it all fall apart? Did it not drive the knife deeper to name her daughter for Rhaegar’s unfounded delusions?

Was it not the greatest mockery she could offer him?

 “Look at her, Ned,” she whispered. “Look at that face. She’ll be a fighter, she will. Fierce and true, a She-Wolf of the North. Her father thought she’d be the third ‘head of the dragon’, thought she’d help her brother Aegon be the foretold _saviour_ of some prophecy. He was wrong, I know that now. Aegon is dead, and so is Rhaegar, and soon I will be as well.”

Wet drops fell on Lyanna’s crown.

“But she’ll survive, I know it,” she continued. “Whatever’s coming, she’ll face it and win. They’ll sing songs about her, Ned, songs about the fierce warrior who saved the world…”

She trailed off. The baby gave a sharp cry that tapered off into distressed whimpers. The tightening around her chest was making it too difficult to speak, to soothe her child. Instead, she started to hum a hushed lullaby. It had once been a song her own mother had sung for her as a small toddler, and her croaky hum did it no justice. She hummed on nevertheless, to no avail: her baby refused to settle.

A stronger voice joining hers gave her a start, and she past her shoulder to Ned. Tears streamed down his flushed cheeks. His torso shook with the strength of his grief, yet his humming barely faltered. It gave her strength, the two of them humming their childhood lullaby, and little Visenya quieted down, seemingly appeased.

 _Let this be my last moment_ , she prayed _. If I am to be taken from this world, let me die now, in my brother’s arms and holding my daughter._

And five minutes later, in the arms of a beloved brother and crooning a sweet lullaby to her daughter, Lyanna Stark died.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! This is the first time I've written for GoT or ASoIaF, as I mostly stick to Marvel, but I've had this on my laptop a while and I thought I'd post it. Originally, I mean this as a prologue for a much longer fic, but I don't have time to give it the love it deserves so I probably won't write any more on this - or I'll do it much later. I almost changed it to a Jon oneshot, but it doesn't resonate as well if it's not Fem!Jon.
> 
> Leave kudos or a comment. Lemme know what you liked or disliked, and feel free to shoot me a message on tumblr as well - I'm @race-jackson there. If you think I should continue, also let me know, but anyway, thanks for reading!


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